A new report from the IPCC issues the world one of its most stark warnings on climate change to date. Leaked drafts suggest this report will be one of the IPCC’s most stark warnings yet issued on climate change, especially as it relates to human health.

Authors of the health chapter say the report chronicles serious impacts to human health and wellbeing already from climate change, and warn of our limited ability to adapt to rapidly increasing global temperatures.

What is the IPCC and what does it report on?

The IPCC is a scientific body under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) – 195 countries are members of the IPCC.

Every four years, the IPCC releases a series of assessment reports on the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. Four Assessment Reports (AR1, AR2, AR3 and AR4) and part 1 of the Fifth Report (WGI or AR5) have been released to date. The AR5 WGI report covered the physical science and was released in September 2013.

The second part (WGII) of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) will be released this week. This IPCC Second Working Group report (WGII) covers the evidence on the impacts of climate change on humans and other species, the vulnerability of human society and other species and ecosystems to climate change, and on the adaptation measures underway or needed to minimise adverse impacts.

The findings of note from WGII include that climate change is affecting everyone in every nation on every continent, right now. Australia is particularly vulnerable to impacts on food production. The report highlights that people everywhere are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, especially extreme weather events which are now more frequent and more severe.

Despite long standing warning on the need for mitigation (curbing emissions) and adaptation (responding to minimise the impacts of climate change), levels of adaptation to global warming around the world remain low. Some efforts by defence organisations, the tourism industry and insurance companies lead the way, but much more must be done. Failing to do so will put health further at risk, as it means we are not acting to avoid some potentially preventable impacts, like coastal flooding, heat stress from heatwaves, and the spread of disease.

The report shows that failing to cut greenhouse gas emissions will lead to levels of warming that will make some parts of the world uninhabitable. However reducing emissions can cut the economic damage from climate change considerably. Further, the report shows that reducing emissions will bring many immediate and localised benefits to human health – the savings from which would substantially offset the costs of reducing emissions.

Health professionals are urged to act to raise awareness about the health risks from climate change and the health benefits of cutting emissions. Unless these issues are more widely understood, we risk failing to take actions that may ultimately determine whether or not we survive as a species, this profound, manmade, global threat to health.

What can you do?

You can help promote the issues raised in the IPCC report this week by joining a social media Thunderclap on climate and health. Follow the Climate and Health Alliance (Australia) on Twitter @healthy_climate) and our international group the Global Climate and Health Alliance on @GCHAlliance.

Importantly however, please do as CAHA President Dr Liz Hanna urges in this press release:

“Act at a global level, a national level, at state and community level and as individuals. We must do all we can to cut emissions and urge others to do so if we are to avoid putting health at greater risk,” Dr Hanna said. “The reality is, cutting emissions will bring many immediate benefits for public health, as well as help limit climate change in the longer term. We can afford to do it, but we cannot afford to wait.”

There was a large turnout in Melbourne in March when the Victorian branch of Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF – Vic) held their second interdisciplinary conference abouthealth and environmental sustainability.

Nurses, midwives and sustainability – we’re all in this together

It was great to see so many nurses in Victoria being involved and showing their support and understanding of the connection between environmental issues and health.

The conference was even bigger than last year’s successful event – there were so many registrations the event had to be moved from the branch’s education centre to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

An inspiring program attracted over 500 members or participants. Sustainability efforts were brought alive through positive stories of possibility and practical action, with motivating speakers capturing the attention of nurses and midwives.

Congratulations to ANMF for making great progress and expanding their annual Health and Environmental Sustainability Conference, their networks and partnerships.

This conference was really an exceptional example of the importance of health professionals getting together and sharing information and having an opportunity to endorse sustainability efforts. Attending a conference of this calibre is clearly appreciated as a useful stepping stone for many health professionals both to start sharing ideas that are already developed without having to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and for taking initial steps to evaluate their own workplace practices.

Networking opportunities abounded, with the conference providing nurses and midwives with the chance to meet other health professionals within workplaces and across health services sharing the same interest in health and environmental sustainability, as well as the chance to connect with leading experts and researchers who came with their expertise in environmental issues and health impacts.

The Climate and Health Alliance was invited to present at this years’ conference and screen the CAHA/PHAA film ‘The Human Cost of Power’. Other presentations features practical and achievable ways to improve environmental sustainability and healthy practices at work and make a real contribution and difference to the health of the community and our environment.

Dr Barbara Sattler is highly respected nurse academic and public health advocate for environmental health and has been integral in initiating environmental health in nursing practice and education.

Some key studies shared by Dr Sattler included a benchmark investigation on pollution in newborns – and biomonitoring studies of chemical exposure in healthcare found in doctors and nurses (such as BPA, phthalates, PBDE, triclosan). The latter found increased risk of developing illnesses such as cancer and asthma among in many health professionals.

Dr Sattler’s emphasis was on the need to removechemical exposures in hospitals and other health settings as well as waste reduction. Suggested ways are through environmentally friendly and sustainable procurement, renewable energy systems, improving efficiency in energy and water use, recycling, and composting among many other things. In accordance to the hospital environmental health assessment tool developed by Health Care Without Harm, better coordination around hospital policy, advocacy, education, research and practice settings was underlined.

Lastly, Dr. Sattler highlighted the importance of nurses and midwives as trusted conveyors of health information to patients, to community and policymakers. Nurses and midwives can bridge the relationship between the community and clinical information, and thus not only have an important voice but ultimately many decisions about healthy/sustainable choices is in their hands.

Jefferson Hopewell from Health Purchasing Victoria told the conference that 56% of environmental footprint in Victoria comes from consumables. Jefferson reports he is (to the best of his knowledge) the only person directly employed in health sector in Australia working on sustainable procurement. Changing to environmentally preferred purchasing practices can be either buyer led or purchaser led and he urged health professionals to make contact with the office of Health Purchasing to discuss greener purchasing options.Barwon Health’sspeaker Bronwyn Aylmer presented a film showing the great work and non-cost driven initiatives being undertaken at Barwon for environmental benefits in the health and food services. They aim to be one of Australia’s greenest health service using a closed loop system, composting food waste and generally reduce, reuse, recycle and rethink all resources and products.

Environmental Sustainability Commissioner Kate Auty highlighted the science of communication and the importance of using simple infographics when communicating messages, especially important in making broader environmental issues personally relevant. Professor Auty shared the key messages from the recently released State of the Environment Victoria 2013 Report, developed to “inform the Victorian community about the health of the natural environment and influence government to achieve environmental, social, cultural and economic sustainability”.Hospitals are massive consumers and producers of waste. Monash health green team are a pioneer in green cleaning replace chemicals with cloths and steam – it’s faster, saves money according to Roslyn Morgan’s presentation ”From Little Things, Big Things Grow”. She concentrated on empowering nurses and bringing the concept closer to home and working environment as well as the possibilities of making a cumulative difference and the opportunities of proactive grassroot and leadership roles as clinical nurses. She Added a forth ‘r’ for relationships to reduce, reuse, recycle.

Michael McCambridge and Monika Page Environmental Sustainability Officer from Melbourne Health shared their Think Green Strategy 2011-15 in the presentation ”Know before you throw” about the cost of waste. Clinical waste is more costly than other waste and there are many opportunities to reduce disposal of clinical waste.

It was especially good to hear the strong emphasis on the public health implications of climate policyfrom the Shadow Minister Mark Butler, who stated: “ Good climate policy is also good public health policy.” He indicated he was particularly impressed by the CAHA and The Climate Institute 2012 report Our Uncashed Dividend: The Health Benefits of Climate Action, and overview of the health co-benefits from reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Mr Butler stressed the need to reduce each of these to tackle climate and health relying on especially two pillars: emissions trading schemes and renewable energy policy.

Aileen Thoms presented from Koo Wee Rup Regional Health Service – Showing that being a small regional health service is no barrier to making great improvements in environmental health. KRHS are shifting from medical model to socioecological approach to health and reorienting towards being more health promoting and community focused, e.g. by engaging local community kitchen and garden groups. Koo Wee Rup aim to enhance health and wellbeing by intersectoral partnerships and enabling educative and supportive environments for humans and the planet.

The Abbott government needs to shed its mindless opposition to carbon pricing and embrace a policy that actually has a chance of addressing climate change, unlike Direct Action.

The Abbot Government’s policy for addressing climate change, the Direct Action Plan, is currently undergoing public scrutiny via a Senate Inquiry into the policy. More specifically the Inquiry will look into whether the plan is a “failure to systematically address climate change”.

Sadly there is little that is ‘direct’ about the Direct Action Plan, as it is largely about using taxation revenue to funnel, through complicated administrative schemes, subsidies to polluting industries for emissions reductions they might make anyway. It reduces any incentives for long-term emissions cuts due to a short program time frame.

Despite being touted as the cornerstone of national climate policy, the Direct Action Plan will not even achieve the wildly inadequate emissions reduction target of a five per cent cut on 1990 levels by 2020, let alone the Climate Change Authority’s recommended 19 per cent cut. In the words of The Climate Institute: “No independent analysis to date has shown that the policy framework as outlined can achieve Australia’s international obligations and emission commitments.” (pdf)

Bit of a worry, isn’t it?

A more ‘direct’ way of achieving emissions reductions might be to impose a financial penalty or disincentive to pollute. That would increase the costs of emission per tonne, raise the relative costs of emissions-intensive practices and create an incentive to find lower emissions alternatives. It would also make cleaner, lower emissions pathways relatively cheaper, compared to now. But, oh wait… that’s what we already have in the form of a carbon price. It’s the advice of leading economists, climate policy experts (pdf), the OECD and the World Bank to put a price on carbon. Yet the Abbott government is seeking to abolish it.

Other elements of the (as yet poorly spelled out) Plan include the employment of masses of young people to plant trees. A laudable aim, both for youth employment and for revegetation projects, but as an emissions strategy, it’s a bit like saying you’re going to stop the warming of the ocean by picking up litter on the beach: nice idea but hopelessly inadequate in tackling the core problem.

The core problem, as it stands, is our fossil-fuels intensive energy system, based as it is on coal, gas and oil. Until we begin to transition away from these energy sources and take advantage of our abundant, cost effective (because they carry few or none of the “externalities” of fossil fuels, like environmental harm and damage to people’s health) renewable energy resources like wind and solar, we’re basically spitting into the wind.

Despite the rhetoric, the Direct Action Plan and its Emissions Reduction Fund will not fund lowest cost, effective emissions reductions with minimal administration. It seems more likely it will to do the opposite by supporting high polluters with large subsidies to make little or no emissions reductions, at the same time as creating a massive increase in paperwork with a project-by-project approach that will cost more and disproportionately burden smaller organisations.

Multidisciplinary

But the core issue in regard to the Direct Action Plan for health and medical professionals is that this and other proposed climate and energy policies fundamentally overlook the full truth about climate change: that it is not an environmental problem, and cannot be solved by a single portfolio approach. It is a profoundly complex issue that impacts on every corner of society, every industry, every person, every species.

But while it is complex, and no other challenge like it has been faced by human society before, we know what to do. It’s not like we’ve just found out about it. A recent note from the Australian Parliamentary Library chronicles the sad and chequered history of climate policy in Australia, starting back in 1972, smeared as it is by the fingerprints of rent seekers, big coal, oil giants, gutless politicians, climate deniers and those who are willing to willfully gamble the lives and futures of our children, our grandchildren and a future for the extraordinary miracle of human existence on this tiny blue planet.

Climate change is, as the international medical journal The Lancet wrote in 2009, the biggest threat the global public health this century. Climate change threatens the future of human civilisation. As leading climate scientist Hans Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Institute in German says, if we hit a temperature rise of four degrees, projected for mid century on current rates of emissions, the difference between that and our (also too high) target of two degrees, may be “human civilisation”. That’s a big gamble to take.

And it’s not one we need to take. As the European Commission 2050 Roadmap outlines, the pathway to a low carbon economy offers lower energy costs, cleaner air, a healthier community, and the preservation of vital natural capital.

In its flagship report (pdf) on a global low carbon transition, the German Advisory Council on Global Change is emphatic that the key ingredients for this necessary transition are available. It states: “the technological potential for comprehensive decarbonisation is available”, the business and financial models are available, and “the political instruments needed for a climate friendly transformation are widely known”.

Here in Australia, two sets of comprehensive modelling, from Beyond Zero Emissions and the University of NSW (pdf), show affordable technologies for a 100 per cent renewable energy supply for Australia are available now, at a lower cost than polluting ones.

The Abbott government would do well to look beyond its rhetoric and determined opposition to policies that have global and expert support. To do otherwise risks failing in its duty of care to act in the interests of Australian citizens, by leading us on a global warming pathway which looks to carry the kinds of profound consequences only those well versed in the Bible may yet have contemplated.

Fiona Armstrong is a health professional and founder and Convenor of the Climate and Health Alliance, a coalition of healthcare stakeholders working together for an evidence based response to climate change.

Australian Medical Students Association (AMSA) take some real climate action

Henry West

For many years the World Health Organisations (WHO) have made it clear that the health care sector should lead by example in terms of reducing climate change pollutants and by demonstrating how climate change mitigation can yield tangible, immediate health benefits.

At the recent Australian Medical Student Association (AMSA) Global Health Conference (GHC) in Hobart the challenge this viewpoint presents to us was taken up with vigor. For the first time ever an AMSA event was completely carbon neutral and actually carbon negative.

This was no minor undertaking, as the conference was very well attended with over 500 people present; nearly 200 tonnes of CO2 were offset. This was achieved via two internationally recognised projects coordinated by Climate Friendly, a large Australian carbon-offsetting firm. One of the projects in particular had immediate health benefits and was of particular satisfaction to the GHC organising committee.

This project was a Cambodian one that actively replaces highly polluting indoor wood/charcoal fired cooking stoves with new far more efficient and clean ones, the New Lao Stove (NLS). The NLS was developed by GERES, an NGO ?that has been operating in the region for many years. More efficient than traditional stove models, the NLS uses 20-30% less fuel-wood and charcoal, thereby reducing CO2 emissions from cooking. This has immediate and dramatic health impacts for whole families, mostly regarding respiratory health, in conjunction with the large CO2 mitigation.

For AMSA to be taking positive action in this way, by providing budgetary means for events to be offset and also personnel to ensure that reductions in impacts are made in the first place is a testament to their commitment to both global health and also playing their part in addressing the climate emergency we are facing.

I encourage all to consider the impact of their own events in the health care sector, whether it is in management or simple attendance. Cleaning up our own backyard allows us to encourage and assist others to do the same.

When we are in the business of health care contributing to what will likely be the greatest health threat of the 21st century is not acceptable.

Henry West was the Environmental Officer for the AMSA 2013 GHC and is the 2013 Student Representative for Doctors for the Environment Australia in Tasmania. He is a student at UTAS.

November 2013

This forum brought together health and medical researchers, health and medical professionals, students, environmental educators and community members to discuss the research, policy and advocacy agenda needed in Australia on climate and health.

Participants issued a Joint Statement following the forum expressing their collective concern at the current lack of recognition of the health effects of climate change by governments, businesses and the broader community.

Street based campaigning to engage people in climate action can be challenging, and sometimes campaigners wonder if it’s worth it!

People don’t always want to engage directly, and for some members of the community, hearing about climate change is confronting and so they would rather not talk about it – or even accept a flyer about a climate-related event.

But every little interaction like this is a building block for further interaction and can help in providing an opening for those people to think more about the issue down the track.

Here’s what psychologist Dr Bronwyn Wauchope had to say to some campaigners handing out flyers for the National Day of Climate Action this Sunday:

“Some people just aren’t willing to accept it’s a real problem, but don’t underestimate those momentary interactions – it’s about breaking it down for people bit by bit. Like building a house, we need to lay our foundations brick by brick. Over time this will build into a strong structure, one that people will see and want to replicate.

It can be hard when people refuse to see this reality or refuse to care about nature or others, but let’s not confuse that with how we feel – your efforts to engage and encourage others to stand up for this issue are admirable so be sure to congratulate yourselves!

Plus it’s more depressing to stand aside and do nothing, and you’re protecting our own health and well-being by taking action.

While those who declined may not give this another thought, just by having that brief interaction will increase the chance they will have a conversation later or fleetingly think about it when they see it on the TV or when a movie star speak about it.

Over time those interactions will build up, and when they hear others in their circle express concern, they’ll be more likely to share that concern.”

“I had the pleasure of attending the September meeting of the Victorian Green Health Round Table Group this month and was inspired by some of the actions being taken within Victorian hospitals to reduce their environmental footprint and save resources.

Individuals from around fifteen major hospital groups met at Barwon Health in Geelong to discuss current initiatives and to hear from Professor John Agar on the world leading green dialysis program run at Barwon Health.

Professor Agar shared the success of the green dialysis program, and the Barwon team’s contribution to starting the world’s literature on eco-dialysis. There are now 30 publications in the health and medical literature about this program.

The program began as a nocturnal dialysis program to allow patients to dialyse at home, however the excessive costs associated with water, power and waste that were then borne by patients forced a rethink about how to take a smarter approach to water use and re-use and sourcing cheaper power.

The unit now provides the world’s first solar powered dialysis system and recycles and reuses reject water from the reverse osmosis system. Patients are sent home with solar panels that cover all the energy requirements of the dialysis machine.

We heard from international speaker Dr Blair Sadler from the University of California and the successful Healthier Hospitals Initiative as well as local and interstate sustainable healthcare professionals sharing their experiences. Josh Karliner from Health Care Without Harm shared a innovative new communications platform that’s connecting people working on greening the health sector initiatives worldwide!

Check out this report via Croakey for a Twitter report of the day’s events.

A new short film, ‘The Human Cost of Power’, produced by award winning science journalist, Alexandra de Blas will be previewed at a public forum in Melbourne on Wednesday 18th September 2013.

The film, ‘The Human Cost of Power’ explores the health impacts associated with the massive expansion of coal and unconventional gas in Australia.

The public forum will feature expert speakers including University of Melbourne researcher Dr Jeremy Moss, climate scientist Professor David Karoly, Friends of the Earth campaigner Cam Walker, and Dr Jacinta Morahan from Surf Coast Air Action.

The Human Cost of Power is produced for the Climate and Health Alliance and the Public Health Association of Australia.

The forum is supported by the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Melbourne.

The public forum and film screening will be held from 6.00pm-7.30pm at the Laby Theatre, Room L108, Physics South Building 192, University of Melbourne on Wednesday 18th September 2013.